


Created or destroyed

by tournamentofhearts



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tournamentofhearts/pseuds/tournamentofhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Impossible things happen here every day.” —Ryan Choi, in All-New Atom #5</p>
<p>“Does it hurt?” —Ryan’s father, in All-New Atom #5</p>
<p>Three times the elder Professor Choi learned something. Major spoilers through the end of All-New Atom and selected events after All-New Atom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Created or destroyed

i. Disappear completely

Ryan was constantly low on funds after he started teaching at Ivy. Between living expenses and the miscellaneous costs of performing his daily, miraculous absurdities as a superhero, it was a wonder he didn’t call home for money on a regular basis. Then again, he couldn’t have afforded the phone bill. His father offered more often than Ryan accepted, even though the elder Dr. Choi wasn’t exactly flush with cash and they both knew it. If days or weeks passed with no word after a quick, heartfelt thank you, he would try not to think: “Is my son dead?”

When Ryan’s mother had been diagnosed, Dr. Choi had refused to let himself think about her dying—fear, rational or not, had pressed on their little family from all sides, and he felt he couldn’t risk somehow cursing her even with the thought. That last day at the hospital, less than a year before his son left for Ivy, he still couldn’t think the word until it happened.

When Ryan would contact his father with an apologetic, exhausted update after a too-long silence, Dr. Choi fought down his initial impulse to yell, “Did you die?! Why haven’t you been in touch, I’ve been so worried, Ryan, please, I worry for you.”

One day, he got a phone call from a stranger about Ryan. He was right.

 

ii. Life in miniature

The funeral was full of people Dr. Choi had never met before and did not expect to meet again, and he kept thinking that a giant floating green alien head—whom he had met for the first time when the Head was wedged between shelves in a pantry, muttering muffled imprecations through duct tape—had been able to share more of Ryan’s life in the past several years than Ryan’s own father. Head, as they apparently called him, had moved out of the duplex after Ryan’s best friend Panda was murdered, and had been helping to look after Panda’s baby son since then. The Head didn’t seem to speak much standard English; Dr. Choi wondered if anyone had tried to find out whether Head’s first language was something else entirely, or whether he’d remained displaced—surrounded by affection and even a sense of purpose, but always alone on some level.

No wife, no child left to him, Dr. Choi ended up bringing home Copernicus, Ryan’s dog. Years ago he’d warned his son that the dog might carry vermin to Ryan’s bed; Ryan said something about how “she did, actually, sorta,” but added that Copernicus had risked her life for him, so she could sleep wherever she wanted. After the funeral, Dr. Choi sat at the foot of his bed and looked at the dog next to him, then tentatively rested his hand behind her head. A living, breathing creature, the one being that had lived with Ryan throughout those last years and seen him off whenever he left home to save the day.

 

iii. Small wonder

Dr. Choi wasn’t sure what he had expected of Ray Palmer. Ryan had been an only child and a lonely child, and even though his father had always tried to encourage him—his agile, omnivorous mind, his keen interest in the sciences—he knew Ryan looked for more inspiration elsewhere, something to keep him going during school. His mother, a gold medal gymnast who believed sports promoted both teamwork and general excellence, had started him on gymnastics when he was two, but Ryan never made close friends in those classes either. His father had hoped things would change when Ryan asked if he could start taking karate again, and he had said yes to the request without any questions. Ryan had protected his mother from the knowledge of just how terrible his school days were, even after he had been beaten nearly to death by former classmates one night; he’d protected his father from that knowledge, too, until years later, when old enemies literally rose from the dead to try to claim Ryan.

Ryan had found inspiration, emotional sustenance, in letters exchanged with someone he came to consider his beloved friend and mentor, but when his father asked Ray Palmer if he could read those letters—the words Ryan had written to him, the thoughts that had led Ryan to Ivy Town and eventually, unwittingly, to his death—Dr. Palmer looked stricken. In youthful, desperate enthusiasm, casting about for someone to guide him, Ryan had written to a renowned scientist who he had hoped would somehow tell him the secret of getting through what he had to get through. But all those years he was writing to an imposter: an enemy, not even his own enemy; someone who had picked him out as a tool to tinker with and use against someone else.

“I don’t have Ryan’s letters,” Dr. Palmer said, unnecessarily and with a grimace of apology. “But I did look at the letters he received. The science was the kind of thing that would have fascinated someone of Ryan’s caliber of intellect back then, but the personal stuff—” he grimaced again—“it was banalities, basically. I’m sorry, I just… I’m so, so sorry…”

Ray Palmer was younger than he had expected—not so very much older than Ryan, who would never turn 30. Dr. Choi thought of the first time his son had asked him to step into a room and witness a miracle: Ryan, haloed by a blaze of light, shrinking down in his silly costume and belt until he was just a tiny figure on the floor; then springing up again, fully restored. He had to laugh now, and he did, hoarsely. Dr. Palmer looked at him, reaching out a hand for a moment, then drawing it back, as if unsure whether he had the right to touch Dr. Choi’s shoulder in concern.

“Ryan was my only child. He was a miracle, and after he was born, my wife and I found out we couldn’t have any more. He’s always been… something out of nothing, he always managed to do some amazing things. So it’s not a surprise, that he became… a real superhero, when the person he thought inspired him turned out to be someone completely different—when the person he thought he was looking for, he didn’t know him at all.” Something out of nothing, and now nothing again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in an attempt to make some sense (at least in emotional terms) of the revelation toward the end of All-New Atom that Chronos had forged the letters supposedly from Ray, and to bring it together with other elements from both early and late in the series. It does make sense that Ryan was able to be inspired by those letters, and to become a superhero, even if what inspired him turned out to be a fake and a trap and not really about Ryan at all—that greatness was already in him.
> 
> Ryan’s death—murder by assassins hired by the serial killer Dwarfstar, less than two years after the end of All-New Atom—was tragic on multiple levels (and it took five assassins to take Ryan down: only a coward would send five assassins after one man). This remains true, even though last year Ryan (delightfully) returned to the land of the living in Convergence: The Atom. As for DC Rebirth, the original Ryan Choi has significantly different characterization than the new one, though he’ll probably be delightful in Rebirth, too.
> 
> Timelines are approximate here, but I wanted to explore Ryan’s death from the POV of his father, his only known surviving family member. Canonically, their wry relationship is fundamentally loving and supportive: Ryan may yell about how his father finally respects him while Ryan’s dreaming in a Black Mercy coma, but it’s clear his dad already does respect him in real life, initial shouting and disbelief regarding Ryan’s superheroics and a war for the fate of Ivy Town or the whole planet notwithstanding.
> 
> All section titles are from individual issues or trade paperback releases of All-New Atom.


End file.
